{se·man·tics n. The meaning or the interpretation of a word, sentence, or other language form}

"Semantics" isn't necessarily a bad word, as many disagreements hinge on how we define our terms.
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Wednesday, July 05, 2006

Responding to Hassan on Hip-Hop

Hassan's been out there, Blogging While Black, again. Here's my comment in response to his latest, which is called "Bigger Than Hip-Hop?":

'One the one hand, I think there's some validity to "the movie industry defense," which suggests that holding Hip-Hop more accountable than the movie industry is unfair.

Some Hip-Hop talks about "bad things," while some movies show it.

The movie industry has been called on some of its crap, but no particular community of people seems to be looked down upon, as a result of movie messages.

On the other hand, one might say that people are more exposed to music than they are to movies... and that this suggests a certain amount of responsibility and culpability on the parts of the creators.

It's an interesting debate with many layers, but ultimately, I doubt we'd want the movie industry to represent us the way that a lot music videos do.'

2 comments:

It's hard for me to fault someone for making money. If people are buying your records, why would you change and risk losing your fan base?

But at the same time, you've go to realize how many people take your lyrics to heart. How many kids carry a gun because they hear rappers talk about them all the time? If it's just one more then that's too many.

I know I refer to girls as Bitches, and it's probably in no small part to me hearing it used millions of times in the music I used to listen to growing up. After awhile I just got desensitized to the word.

People pick up on everything these guys say, and it does have a negative effect on society, especially young kids.

Should movies be less accountable for what they show as opposed to what artists say? I think maybe they should. A lot of times, the movies are known to be stories. Most of the rappers try to beat it in our head that this is the way they live. They are being "real".

re: 'Should movies be less accountable for what they show as opposed to what artists say? I think maybe they should. A lot of times, the movies are known to be stories. Most of the rappers try to beat it in our head that this is the way they live. They are being "real".'

I think that's the crux of the thing.

eminem can say that this is REAL, one second, then claim it's just entertainment the next.

But which is the truth? To be honest, most folks probably don't care. It's the ambiguity that's part of the problem.

Now, Hip-Hop ain't exactly CNN, but imagine if you couldn't tell where the news stopped and drama began?